Do-it-yourself street foods!

Not everything that tastes good is healthy…..especially if it’s not cooked right.

For the common Filipino, street foods are delicacies that have been incorporated in our daily diet. Everywhere we go, there is always this skinny, jolly-looking fellow riding a bicycle that is attached to an improvised stove that cooks, fishball, chicken ball, kikiam and kwek-kwek. Our afternoon merienda is never complete without those cute and delicious little balls.

street foods may look yummy but they're dangerous when not cooked properly

However, no matter how mouth-watering these street foods are, there is always the issue of sanitation. Let’s face it guys, the street is not really a healthy environment anymore for you to cook your foods. There is air pollution coming from vehicles, the road is littered with trash, the sweat and saliva of the customers splattering the fishball stall. And what about the way the street foods are cook, do you think its safe? How many days was the fishball seller using the same oil to cook his fishball? How can you be so sure that the sauce he used was safe?

Delicious doesn’t always mean it’s healthy. That is why if you still want to enjoy street foods without the fear of acquiring hepatitis, here is a simple recipe that you should try cooking at home:

How to cook kwek-kwek with special sauce

The kwek-kwek are small little orange balls made of quail egg and starch. Here is a simple recipe on how to do it:

Ingredients:

12 to 18 pieces boiled quail eggs

1 cup flour

3 tbsp cornstarch

1/2 cup water

1 tbsp anatto powder (pinulbos na atsuete)

1/2 tsp salt

1/2 tsp ground black pepper

2 cups cooking oil

Cooking procedure:

1. Place the cornstarch in a container and dredge the boiled quail eggs. Set aside.

2. In a mixing bowl, combine flour, salt, and pepper then mix thoroughly.

3. Dilute the anatto powder in warm water then pour-in the mixing bowl with the other ingredients. Mix well.

4. Place all the quail eggs in the mixing bowl and coat with the batter.

5. Heat the pan and pour the cooking oil.

6. When the oil is hot enough, deep-fry the quail eggs by scooping them from the mixing bowl using a spoon. Make sure that each is coated with batter.

7. After a few minutes, remove the fried quail eggs from the pan and place in a serving plate.

H1.ere is for the kwek-kwek sauce

Ingredients:

1 box flour

4 cups of water

8 tbsp of soy s

Pepper

Sugar

Procedures:

1. Mix all the ingredients in the sauce pan. Heat it up while continuously mixing the ingredients. Keep mixing until the sauce is sticky enough.

2. Before turning off the heat, add red pepper. If you want to add a little more taste, you can add Maggi Magic Sarap.

Aside from being sure that what you are eating is safe, cooking your own kwek-kwek can help you explore other possibilities in cooking. You can tweak a little bit of the recipe so that it can fit your own tastebuds Stay tuned for the next installment of Do-it-yourself Street foods and for now, enjoy eating your kwek-kwek!

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11 Comments:

I only have minor issues with your article regarding your grammar, sentence construction, use of punctuation marks, etc. But the thing I would like to point out is your use of a How to article. In my opinion, how to articles are done to give a new light in an issue. What I mean is you should have done something different with the tokneneng. Maybe you could have made it into a dessert or make it more ‘sosyal’ or upper-class fitting. We all know how to cook it as you stated. but I think more people would have interest in reading your article if the tokneneng was cooked in a different way.
You should have also stated how it would taste like. Would it be the same taste as the ones sold in the streets, or would it give you a more domestic feel? Something like that.

Error/s:
#1 procedure should be: put quail eggs on a boiling water for a few minutes till cooked then peel the eggs after.
(H1.ere) is for the kwek-kwek sauce – here*
8 tbsp of (soy s) – soy sauce*
Keep mixing until the sauce is sticky enough. – keep mixing until consistency of the sauce is good.*

The article is straight to the point,however, you could think other angle aside from this. Too light, but minimal errors. I suggest instead of telling us the procedure of kwek kwek, you could just observe or investigate of how these vendors cooked our favorite street foods, or the environment of the stalls. 🙂

It is an article different from the others. Good. The procedure of cooking “kwek-kwek” is a great solution to those people who really love to eat this kind of street food in a safer way. You also used simple terms and steps which can be easily understood by your readers. With this, even amateurs or first timer cooks can make this delicacy inside their own home.

As what Nash, Dherryl, and Marj said, there are errors that need to be corrected. Still, try to make your article more interesting like giving some trivia in some of the procedure in cooking kwek kwek.

All in all, I find your article good. It refreshed my eyes from the usual angle I have read a while ago.

For me, this article is a mixture of stock knowledge, experience, and internet. I am not sure if all of the stuffs here are products of your young mind. Maybe I am just curious on how you come up with those ingredients and its measurements, the procedures on how to cook, and so on. Well, tell me if I’m wrong.

If this article is really a creation of your mind, well, I guess I have to eat my words and bow down for a magnificent recipe that you presented. I admire your cooking talent because just like you, I also love to cook. Next time, don’t forget to bring us your recipes. Overall, the article is just okay.

-Nice lead. Words are clean and understandable. You can pinpoint easily to the readers your idea.
-The humor adds factor to your lead.
-However, I feel your shiftless when you only focus on a how-to-do type of article. The lead is promising that you should put details on it side by side so you could create a more interesting article.
-This can still be improved.

put a little excitement into this article. it’s different from the others, you should have presented a new recipe with kwek-kwek as your main ingredient so that your readers have learned something new after they read your article.

Besides how-to-article, there are other ways to deliver your story. Your article would fit a food magazine since it is a recipe type article. You can still improve on your article by making it more interesting. You can allot a paragragraph for different ways of cooking kwek-kwek.